Intelligent scheduling and path planning of warehouse mobile robots

Abstract

The rapid increase of E-commerce brings new challenges for warehouse logistics. The shipments are characterized as big variety,small volume,large number of small batches and short cycle,and thus are difficult to handle. Emerging logistic technology based on mobile robots is the promising solution. In this work,firstly a warehouse model with flexible re-configurability was set up and a set of rules to govern warehouse logistics and robot movement were defined. After that,the logistic task was decomposed and a robot scheduling method taking into account the Manhattan path cost and the waiting time cost was proposed. Next,the A*algorithm was adapted for robot path planning under the special constraint rules. Finally,timing information was included for consideration and a timespace map was established to carry out three-dimensional path planning. The intelligent scheduling and path planning methods were validated by simulation experiments. The path planning methods and number of robots were compared in relation to total time cost,total mileage and number of conflicts.